Joe Biden turned a long-running joke among Washington insiders and the press corps about President Trump’s many iterations of “infrastructure week” into a serious dig at his policies and temperament during a speech detailing his own green energy infrastructure plan.
His message: If Biden is elected, infrastructure week will be no joke.
“Donald Trump promised the big infrastructure bill when he ran in 2016. He promised it again in 2017. And then in 2018, and again in 2019,” Biden said in an address streamed from Wilmington, Delaware.
“Seems like every few weeks, when he needs the distraction of the latest charges of corruption in his staff or the conviction of high ranking members of administration and political apparatus, White House announces, quote, ‘It’s Infrastructure Week,'” Biden said. “How many times have you heard him say that? But he’s never delivered. He’s never even really tried.”
The White House press office has rolled out “Infrastructure Week” campaigns during times of turmoil in the administration that often get overshadowed by Trump’s own comments.
In June 2017, during Infrastructure Week, Trump ended an event by criticizing former FBI Director James Comey and calling him a “leaker,” throwing the news cycle far away from the administration’s proposed funding for infrastructure.
In spring 2019, after Trump and Democratic congressional leaders met about a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, Trump made a speech soon after in which he lashed out at Democrats for continued congressional investigations into alleged Russian collusion by his 2016 campaign.
Biden, meanwhile, focused his speech on his “Build Back Better” plan for rebuilding the economy after the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn. Earlier on Tuesday, Biden announced a $2 trillion clean energy plan that aims to eliminate carbon from electric power plants by 2035.
“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is hoax. When I think about climate change, the word I think of is jobs,” Biden said. His campaign claims that the plan would create 5 million new jobs.
‘How many times have you heard him say that, but he’s never delivered. He’s never even really tried.’ — @JoeBiden called out Trump for his phony ’Infrastructure Weeks’ and broken promises pic.twitter.com/BRV1T5DKeE
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 14, 2020
